


Like Wine Between His Teeth

by Mithrigil



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: ...awkward, Body Horror, Consent Issues, First Kiss, Healing, M/M, Paralysis, Repression, Sadism, the pairing is your warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithrigil/pseuds/Mithrigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it comes to healing Kariya’s ravaged body, the cure is worse than the sickness. Kirei knows that all too well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Wine Between His Teeth

Kariya’s entire left side is so useless that even his moans are half-formed and slurred. His eye, unfocused and as white as the worms behind it, lolls toward the black starless sky, dead or dreaming. Kirei’s not sure what he feels about that--he’s not sure what he feels about anything, frankly--but it gathers behind his own skin, like there’s been some kind of transfer, like the magic of the Matou is contagious.

It might be. It doesn’t matter. Not when Kirei’s impulse is what it should be, for a man of the cloth, an arm of the church. Heal. Purge. Mitigate the damage of Tokiomi’s fire and the vile things that Kariya’s done to himself before and since. Never mind that it’s entirely opposite everything else Kirei has ever done for the Church.

Never mind that. Never mind anything.

He lays his hands on Kariya’s sunken, charred chest, and well what do you know, Kariya’s missing a rib like Adam before him. It sounds like something Archer would point out, if Archer had that God instead of his own. Kirei’s not sure how he feels about that either, but a stretch prickles at the corners of his lips, residual heat. Kirei licks at them before he pronounces the words of the spell.

Once, longer ago than Kirei would prefer to remember, a summoned demonic familiar tore a chunk out of his hip the size of a grapefruit, down to the bone. Kirei still has that scar: the skin grafts were imperfect at best and the magical adherence functional, but not cosmetic. He didn’t care then, and doesn’t now. But watching Kariya’s flesh knit and grow Kirei remembers the pain acutely: not only the adrenaline-lessened pain of the wound itself, but the worse, calmer, searing pain as it healed, as skin bubbled up from nowhere and circuits tore and flared to compromise the damage.

Kariya screams. It echoes off the alley walls.

The swell of a thousand closing veins, a trillion new cells birthing and splitting, is more brutal than the inflicted wounds, by an order of magnitude at least. But Kariya is only feeling half of that, and still he chokes on his howling.

Archer said, once, with Kirei’s wine tilted toward his lips, that Kariya’s existence is itself suffering.

The healing magic prolongs him. Well, it prolongs his body, half of it at least, and strains his mind. Blood runs unchecked down the vacant left corner of his mouth, forced out with the last of his shouting. There are vulgar stains in the remains of his clothing, bracken from the fire and that familiar reddened black of blood-soaked fabric too dark to shine. The healing magic still shines but Kirei fists his hands in Kariya’s sweatshirt, anchors the last of the spell. His sweat contests Kariya’s drying blood for the fabric. There shouldn’t be so much. Sweat, not blood. So much, coming from him.

_Pleasure,_ Kirei thinks, distinct but alien, a whisper at the base of his brain.

Kariya’s conscious. Of course he’s conscious, there are still traces of a scream on his breath, as broken as his body but there nonetheless. There is just enough light in the alleyway that his working eye shines, rimmed in a white crust but intent on Kirei. Conscious, yes, but cognizant? Probably not, even after whatever else he’s endured, whatever else allows his mind to persist when his body fails.

Kirei has no idea what Kariya is feeling, behind the pain.

It’s not enough pain, if there’s room in Kariya for anything else.

His fists still curled in Kariya’s clothes, Kirei digs his knuckles down until he feels an explosive, percussive heartbeat through Kariya’s nerveless flesh. The chattering of the crest worms dampens the beat, like static over long distances. One flicker of thought and Kirei could whip out the Black Keys, run Kariya through, one blade between each rib, half a dozen for his heart.

Kirei yanks Kariya up and crushes their mouths together.

The few other times Kirei has kissed anyone at all, his mouth has never been in this shape: strained at the corners, teeth present enough to clash on Kariya’s, tongue at the fore. He tastes blood. Soured blood, threaded with mire and bile. The thought that this poison sustains Kariya, breathes his air and feeds his heart, makes Kirei shove his tongue in, down, the way he used to pleasure his wife when she asked him to. Kariya chokes, stutters around Kirei’s tongue, scrapes at his jaw.

The air in the alleyway is thick with ozone and magic and heat. Sweat buds against Kirei’s collar. He ignores it, it and whatever other stains encroach on his clothes, from either side. He swallows Kariya’s breath, denies him everything. Only one lung will ever fill. Kirei could halve that with one pinch of the right nerve. He could reach right in, root around in the morass of muscle and worms and take every useless part of Kariya out, watch it all oxidize and shrivel on the air.

Instead, he pulls their bodies flush together, because Kariya can’t do it himself. It must gall him to be used. Helpless. Unfeeling, except for the pain. Useless. _Useless,_ and desperate to be anything but.

The heat that thrills through Kirei, a wall of flame behind his eyes, is like magic, like sunrise, like color.

It occurs to Kirei that he’s aroused: more aroused than he’s been in years, prominent and heavy and caged behind Kevlar and cloth.

It occurs to Kirei that his erection is crushed against Kariya’s _right_ hip, the one with nerves to feel.

Nearly everything dissipates at once: the stretch of Kirei’s lips, the surge of his tongue, the heat that sparked it all. He forces it down, spreads the pressure through his body, loosens his fists and lets Kariya fall back to the gravel. Kariya pants for air, curls onto his side like kicked dog. Never mind that. Never mind any of this. Never mind the chill creeping down Kirei’s shoulders with the sweat. Never mind the blood, the filth that now lines Kirei’s mouth.

It dries in the shape of a clown’s crude smile, clings to his five-o’clock shadow.


End file.
